Captain America Annual #13 (1994)

The past can be a funny thing. Things from the past can linger for decades, well into the present time. One example of this is the enmity between Captain America and the Red Skull. These two first started clashing in the fires of World War II. Even the decades in suspended animation have not put an end to the clash between these two. I thought it would be fun to take a look at one of the clashes between these two men. Let's look at Captain America Annual #13!

The cover is a Brian Kong and Don Hudson piece. It's...not a great cover. Well, it's not a very well-drawn cover in my opinion. It depicts Captain America and Bucky breaking through what I think is a glass wall with a giant Red Skull peeking out...behind them? One detail I do like is that the glass shards show various other characters that appear in the story. 

"Heritage of Hatred"
Writer: Roy Thomas
Penciler: Arvell Jones
Inkers: David and Dan Day
Colorist: Dave Sampson
Letterer: Diana Albers
Editor: Mike Rockwitz
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The story begins with Captain America busting into a house. No, he's not here to steal anything. He's actually after his old nemesis since the Second World War: Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull. Ol' Skully has broken into this house, the former home of a new-deceased Russian emigree to retrieve an item that is believed to be there. 

The good Captain fights with the Skull's hired men, and they briefly are able to overcome him thanks to superior numbers. The Skull cracks open a safe and retrieves the item he's after: A book with an iron lock on it.

This book evidently contains information on something called "Der Tag". "Der Tag" translates to "The Day" in German, and in this case, it has two meanings. One was what the Nazis would have called their ultimate victory in WWII. A day that thankfully never came. After the war, "Der Tag" gained a second meaning: when the robots known as the Sleepers would be activated to destroy the world. However, Captain America destroyed the Sleepers in various comics, starting with Tales of Suspense #72 (September 1965) onward. Skull orders his men to execute the Sentinel of Liberty. Cap is able to fight back, and Skull flees to his helicopter. But Captain America will not be deterred. He manages to grab on to the Skull's helicopter.

The Skull shoves the pilot out, knowing Cap will try to save him. True to the Red Skull's prediction, Cap does so, allowing the saboteur to get away. It's here we start flashing back to the last days of World War II, in the bunker of Adolf Hitler. The tyrant entrusts the Skull with a strongbox containing his supposedly "greatest achievements". Unknown to the Skull at the time, a certain trio of men parachuted into the besieged Berlin.

Accompanying Cap is The Spirit of '76 (William Naslund) and the Patriot (Jeffrey Mace). Both of these men would take up the mantle of Captain America in the future. But those are stories for another day. The trio are here to get the strongbox. The trio eventually becomes a quartet.

Meet Aleksey Lebedev, the World War II-era Red Guardian. He first appeared in Namor Annual #1 (1991). Mace and Naslund aren't too welcoming to the man, foreshadowing the Cold War. Lebedev informs them of a way into the Red Skull's bunker. Naslund, Mace, and Lebedev fight their way through the Nazi guard, allowing Rogers to go after the Skull. The Skull tries to blow Cap to bits with a grenade, but ends up eating the explosion himself thanks to Cap's mighty shield.

Skull survives thanks to his suit being armored. He still took a beating, but taunts Cap about the Sleepers. In the sky, Allied bombers start dropping their payloads. It causes a cave in, burying Skull and the strongbox. Despite this, the Skull still did not die, obviously. The way the debris fell kept him from being crushed, and he would end up in suspended animation for decades thanks to special gases that were released from the cave-in. On that day, Cap also headed out for another mission. A mission in England. He and Bucky are going to guard an airdrome in England. This mission would lead to Bucky's seeming death and Cap being in suspended animation himself. Despite that, the strongbox was missing when he was eventually found by HYDRA.

So, what as the book the Red Skull obtained? Well, it was the journal of a spy named Albert Malik. After the mission in Germany, Lebedev was summoned back to Moscow by the then-Premier of the Soviet Union himself, Josef Stalin. Stalin is not happy with the mission being a bust. Lebedev had secretly returned to the site of the cave-in and searched for the strongbox but found nothing. Stalin tells him to get out, and that the only thing that saved him from getting shot was that he's a Hero of the Motherland. 

Time passed on. In 1953, Stalin died. He was succeeded as Premier by Georgy Malenkov (the comic misspells his name as "Georgi"). Malenkov wanted the strongbox, and has assigned a man to get it: Albert Malik himself.

Malik had been called up from a spy cell in Algeria he was leading to pose as the Red Skull, to make it seem like the Skull had not only returned, but also was now promoting Communism. His first task was to attack the United Nations. This was the very mission that the Skull undertook in Young Men #24. The attack was a cover for the real mission: Find the strongbox! This Skull would be foiled by what seemed like an also-returned Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, but was actually William Burnside and Jack Munroe. At that time in the 1950s, those two had taken up the mantles of Captain America and Bucky, respectively.

Not long afterwards, the Soviets created another supervillain called Electro, first appearing in Captain America #78 (September 1954). The villain seemingly died after fighting Burnside and Munroe, but that turned out to not be the case. Malik found Electro's body in the morgue and waked him up with a surge of electrical power.

Electro...lives.

He lives, but his brain is a bit addled from being not quite dead.

The two steal a car and drive off to the UN Headquarters. Malik reveals how the strongbox ended up at the UN's HQ. Evidently it was found by an unnamed person after the war, and was given to them by said person after the HQ was built. Electro spies Captain America on TV, and gets angry because he wants to fight Cap again. But it will have to wait. They have a mission, after all.

The two villains manage to make their way to UN headquarters and get the strongbox. They try to leave, but get stopped by Burnside and Munroe again. Malik wants to flee, but Electro decides to stay and fight.

Electro is more powerful than ever, but Munroe is able to stop him with the aid of a car and a brick wall. Ouch. 

Malik is able to get his hands on the strongbox. However, the box doesn't contain anything...except for a plaque. The plaque states that the man who found the box has the real one, and demands that the UN pay him for it. The UN refused, but Malik was undeterred. He spent decades looking for the strongbox, and only discovered its location while he was in prison. Shortly afterwards, he would be killed in Captain America #347. The strongbox is located in an uninhabited German castle.

Cap follows the Red Skull into the castle. The Sentinel of Liberty manages to make his way through the various traps in the castle, and the Red Skull holds him at gunpoint. The villain uses the journal as a key to open the door to the vault the strongbox is contained in. Cap engages the Skull, but the fight causes a cave-in. Red Skull takes advantage of the confusion to escape with the strongbox. The Skull tries to use Cap's Avengers Quinjet to escape, but Cap hangs on. The Skull figures he can let the Star-Spangled Avenger see what's in the box. After all, it's not like Cap is in any position to stop him from opening it up.

Red Skull is infuriated by what he finds.

Yup, it wasn't some powerful new weapon. It was just some momentos from Hitler's younger days. Drawings and the like. Yeah, it seems that when Hitler said the box contained his greatest achievements, the madman meant stuff from his life before he became one of history's greatest monsters. Cap and Skull struggle, and the Skull nearly falls out of the Quinjet. Cap tries to rescue him, but Skull ends up with a strongbox to the face.

The Skull falls, and Cap is barely able to save himself from being splattered across the German Alps. The story ends with Cap flying off, and the Skull predicting that he and Cap will face off again. After all, he was narrating this story, and he's not doing it from the grave...

I enjoyed this story. It was very action-packed, and it was fun to read. You can tell that Roy Thomas was having a blast writing this story. One thing I did really love about this story was that it used and built on previously established canon. It's something I think most modern Marvel writers refuse to do nowadays. And that's pretty sad, in my opinion. 

The art is...interesting. The best way I can describe it is that it seems to have some of that Golden Age grit, but at the same time, it does feel a bit 90s. I do like the artist's rendition of the Red Skull. Makes him look truly inhuman and monstrous, which fits his nature.

If you want to read this story for yourself, I recommend tracking down the 2011 trade paperback Captain America vs. The Red Skull. Thanks for reading this blog entry! If you liked it, show it off! Take care of yourselves and each other! Stay safe, stay healthy, stay home, wash your hands often, wear a mask, and get your vaccine/booster! See you next time!